1. Field of the Invention
The current invention concerns the field of natural products and foods and more specifically colors and an antimicrobial composition prepared from cranberry juice.
2. Description of Related Art
Health foods are estimated to currently represent an annual market in the United States of at least ten billion dollars ($10,000,000,000.00). By health foods is meant vitamins, minerals and herbal products that are widely believed to be efficacious in improving human health without the cost and side-effects of ordinary pharmaceuticals. In recognition of the popularity and importance of these products the term "nutraceutical" has been coined and the product category has received special government regulatory treatment.
There can be no denying that vitamins and minerals are essential for normal human health. Whether "excessive" doses of some vitamins, for example Vitamin C, provide special benefits is more controversial. More controversial still are the many herbal products of recent popularity such as saw palmetto and Ginkgo biloba. Many people swear by these and related products while large pharmaceutical companies claim that these remedies are untested and worthless. Nevertheless, virtually all important pharmaceutical drugs are based on natural plant products. Not too long ago the study of botany was a mandatory part of medical education. It is also clear that at least some of the herbal cures are effective. For example, feverfew, long a folk cure for headaches, is currently used in Europe as a legitimate cure for migraines.
An even more widely known "natural cure" is the use of fruit juices, especially cranberry juice, for treatment and prevention of urinary tract infections. While the "cranberry juice cure" is widely prescribed, the precise basis of its effectiveness is not completely known. An early hypothesis was that the natural fruit acids, such as benzoic acid, acidified the urine and thereby inhibited bacterial proliferation. While acidification may be part of the puzzle, it does not seem sufficient to explain the advantage cranberry juice seems to hold over other acidic fruit juices. More recently there have been a number of reports that fruits of cranberry and related species of the genus Vaccinium contain a potent factor that inhibits bacterial adhesion. Since bacterial must be able to adhere to urinary endothelia to cause an infection, the anti-adhesion factor may explain the cranberry effect.
In fact, at least one research group has put extensive efforts into purification of the anti-adhesion factor from cranberry and related fruits. The reader's attention is drawn to a series of U.S. patents to Walker et al. (E. B. Walker, R. A. Mikelsen, J. N. Mikelsen and B. L. Roth) (including U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,474,774, 5,525,341, and 5,646,178). These patents disclose complex extraction and fractionation processes by which cranberry fruits are extracted and yield a fraction enriched in the before-mentioned anti-adhesion factor. These patents provides tentative identification of the anti-adhesive factor.
However, the Walker et al. process is complex and cumbersome. Further, it is not clear that all the benefits of cranberry and related fruits is due to the anti-adhesion factor. Therefore, there is still a need for a simple method to concentrate effective materials from cranberry and other plant materials (e.g., flowers, fruits, leaves, stems and roots) for nutraceutical and other uses. Besides their curative properties fruits and other plant materials are frequently strongly pigmented. Since much of our food is of plant origin people have become used to having foods with bright and appealing colors. Highly processed "artificial" foods are generally colorless or have drab and unappealing colors.
Therefore, many millions of dollars each year are spent on putting "artificial colors" and "artificial flavors" into processed food products. While such additives may make the processed food products more attractive, they actually make the products even less suitable for human consumption. The worst of the carcinogenic coal tar dyes have been removed from the market, but a lingering doubt surrounds many of the remaining "certified food colors." Thus, there is a significant need for methods to capture natural colors and flavors from fruits and vegetables.